Catholic colleges and universities same issues as any school: rising costs
and corresponding tuition hikes, student and faculty recruitment and retention,
the academy's place in the world. But the 221 US. Catholic colleges and
universities (with a total enrollment of more than 720,000) often have different
ideas about how and why to address those challenges. They also grapple with the
additional concerns of religious identity and how what they do connects to the
larger church.

NCR recently talked with a half dozen presidents at Catholic schools across
the country about what they see as the main challenges facing Catholic higher
education. Their answers provide insights not just into the situation today, but
into the history and future of Catholic higher education as well.

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JACQUELINE POWERS DOUD

Mount St. Mary's College

Los Angeles

As the only Catholic women's college in the western United States, Mount St.
Mary's student body reflects the ethnic diversity of Los Angeles: About 48
percent of undergraduates are Latina, 22 percent are Asian, 11 percent are
African-American, and 18 percent are Caucasian. About 40 percent are
first-generation college students.

Founded in 1925 and sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, the
school enrolls just under 2,500 students and has been awarded more Fellowships
for Aspiring Teachers of Color by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund than any other
college or university in the United States. A member of the board of the
Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, Doud is Mount St. Mary's
first lay president. She took office in 2000.

Every capable and motivated young woman regardless of socioeconomic
background should have an opportunity to pursue higher education at a Catholic
college if she so chooses. Our big challenge is to provide needed financial aid.
We tell our students they can do anything, so we have to make it possible.

One of higher education's biggest challenges is identifying and selecting
Catholic college leaders who are conversant with and committed to the Catholic
tradition. Current Catholic college and university leadership includes a whole
population of former religious who benefited from formation in the Catholic
intellectual tradition. There's not another generation quite like that. But as
more laypersons are heading these colleges, it's important to identify and
select people committed to the Catholic intellectual tradition in the context of
Vatican II theology.

Attracting Catholic faculty--not just to philosophy and religion departments
but to all fields--is a challenge as well. In the past, with so many sisters and
priests on faculties, we took for granted that faculty members were literate
about the Catholic intellectual tradition. Now Catholics are educated in all
kinds of colleges and universities, and when they are searching for a job
they're not necessarily looking to be at a Catholic college. They're looking for
the whole package: time for scholarly work and opportunities in their
discipline, as well as location and benefits.

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JACK P. CALARESO

Anna Maria College

Paxton, Mass.

Founded by the Sisters of St. Anne in 1946, Anna Maria College is part of the
13-college Worcester, Mass., Consortium (which includes two other Catholic
institutions, Assumption College and College of the Holy Cross) that allows
students to take classes at any of the institutions. Anna Maria enrolls
approximately 1,500 students in more than 30 programs. Calareso took office last
July. He has served as president of Ohio Dominican University in Columbus and
Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, Iowa.

There are a handful of issues that we're all facing. The first is just
fidelity to mission. Are we clear about our mission and what makes us unique?
What's our identity and how is that manifested on our campus? How does it find
its way into our curriculum, programs and services, policies, and procedures?
Are we being true to our Catholic identity? If we're not, why do we exist? There
are plenty of great colleges in the U.S. What do we expect our graduates to know
and learn and do in their lives?

There's a general perception that Catholic higher education is quality higher
education. One reason we have so many non-Catholics attending our schools is
that there's an understanding that Catholic colleges teach and model good
ethical and moral values. But we can't simply live off our reputations. Anna
Maria is a small institution--we're less well-known than many other schools--but
we're taking this issue of accountability very seriously: We have a
responsibility to say, "This is what we say we do and this is how we do it."
Learning objectives, goals, assessments, statistics, and claims about our
programs all ought to be substantiated and transparent to the public.

As we graduate students into a world that's much smaller than it used to be,
we have a responsibility to move aggressively away from simply a Western
perspective and toward a global one. Students need to encounter other cultures
and traditions through study abroad and other international and multicultural
programs. They need to see how complex the world is.

Teaching our students about other faiths, traditions and customs is
particularly important for Catholic institutions because we are part of a
universal church that's alive and well in virtually every part of the world.
We're part of a network that ought to help us focus globally. We're not only
brothers and sisters with Catholics in our own communities, but we share that
identity with people in Eastern Europe and Latin America, in Africa and
Asia.

About 60 percent of our student body is Catholic; if we were 100 percent
Catholic we wouldn't be a Catholic institution. Having some diversity and an
opportunity to encounter people of different faiths is part of the richness of
Catholic higher education and the Catholic intellectual tradition ... the common
search for truth in service to the common good.

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ROSALIE MIRENDA

Neumann College

Aston, Pa.

Founded and sponsored by the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, Neumann
has almost doubled its number of full-time students in the past 10 years. It is
one of 12 Catholic institutions of higher education in the Philadelphia
archdiocese and currently enrolls just over 3,000 students in 19 traditional
undergraduate programs, seven graduate programs, and an accelerated associate
and bachelor's degree program for adults. Fifty-nine percent of the students are
Catholic.

Mirenda, a board member of the Association of Catholic Colleges and
Universities, has served as Neumann's president since 1996.

One major challenge I see is the preservation and strengthening of the
Catholic imagination through our institutions. The commodification of higher
education is scary. The world needs the unique respect and reverence for the
human person that comes through our Catholic tradition. The Catholic--and in our
case, Franciscan--perspective that we bring to the world through our graduates,
programs and all that we do is extremely critical and needs to continue.

In our strategic plan, one goal that's remained constant over the past decade
is to articulate our Catholic Franciscan identity in a pervasive manner. We're
not just thinking about it in terms of theology courses or mission and ministry,
but in everything we do....

We do need to be concerned with finances and intellectual rigor. But if we
don't pay attention to the identity piece, then why do we need to exist? Other
private and public institutions have wonderful programs from a secular point of
view. It's less expensive to go to Penn State.

Catholic institutions do have to determine how they will serve the immigrant
of today, the poor among us, the least served. It's my impression and experience
that it's our kind of college and university where those students are now. We
have to find ways to finance those who are least served educationally. It's not
that these young people don't have the capacity to .learn; it's that they need
more support, and that costs the institution.

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VINCENTIAN FR. DENNIS HOLTSCHNEIDER

DePaul University

Chicago

DePaul University is the nation's largest Catholic university. Of the
school's more than 23,000 students, nearly 15,000 are undergraduates. This year
30 percent of freshmen are first-generation college students.

Founded by the Vincentians in 1898, DePaul offers more than 200 undergraduate
and graduate programs on six campuses in and around Chicago. Holtschneider took
office in 2004 and previously served as executive vice president of Niagara
University in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Our biggest challenges are in two areas: Catholic identity and access of the
poor to our institutions.

I studied the Catholic identity piece a couple of years ago when [education
researcher] Melanie Morey and I surveyed all the presidents of Catholic colleges
and universities. At that point, already more than 50 percent of the presidents
were lay. By and large, schools are hiring very competent people, and most are
Catholic. But when we asked them when they last studied religion, they told us
it was in confirmation class.

I'm not suggesting presidents need an advanced degree in theology, but it's a
real question for boards as they conduct presidential searches: Do candidates
have enough religious background? It doesn't have to be the president; it could
be the provost. But somehow, the leadership of Catholic colleges and
universities needs to be able to understand and articulate that religious vision
and identity.

Another piece of that study, and another challenge, is that at least up to
that point, women were being progressively eliminated from presidential
leadership. In past years as many as two-thirds of Catholic school presidents
were women. By 2003, that number was completely reversed. We discovered that
when female-founded institutions hired a lay president, hall the time they hired
a man. In that aspect, Catholic colleges and universities are moving in the
opposite direction from the rest of the country.

Almost all Catholic colleges and universities were founded when Catholics
were the main immigrant group. As Catholics took a more established place in
society, many colleges moved that direction, too. The second challenge is making
sure there's still access for first-generation college students.

Schools across the country are in a bidding war for the highest SAT scores.
The bulk of financial aid is merit-based and not need-based. The challenge for
Catholic institutions is not to get caught up in that bidding war, to be wary of
following that trend. But it hurts your rankings when you do that. DePaul
consciously makes the decision to focus on need-based aid, so we're willing to
take a hit on the rankings for that reason.

Catholic schools should always have a place for students who can't afford to
be there. We have to hold the line on need-based aid. The federal government is
cutting billions from student loan programs this year, and grants are worth far
less than they used to be. Catholic schools need to figure out how to make
need-based support a priority.

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CHRISTIAN BR. RONALD GALLAGHER

St. Mary's College of California

Moraga, Calif.

Founded in 1863 by the Christian Brothers, St. Mary's is a liberal arts
college in the Lasallian tradition located 20 miles east of San Francisco. St.
Mary's enrolls nearly 4,000 students in 38 undergraduate programs and seven
graduate programs. Approximately 60 percent of undergraduates are Catholic, and
48 percent are students of color. All undergraduates and faculty participate in
the Collegiate-Seminar, the school's great books program that dates back to
1941.

Gallagher previously served as secretary general of the Brothers of the
Christian Schools in Rome and vice chancellor of Bethlehem University in the
Holy Land. He became St. Mary's president in January 2005.

The general challenge facing everyone is affordability, and for us that's
connected to accessibility. We want to reach underserved students, and that
means first-generation students, students from inner cities, and students who
wouldn't normally be considering Catholic higher education because of cost or
other obstacles.

Our challenge is how to make college, and St. Mary's in particular, a
tangible expectation. Part of dealing with that involves forging partnerships
with foundations and agencies to help support developing programs, courses and
scholarships.

Our students are used to living in a diverse society. Here on the West Coast,
it's not a problem recruiting Hispanic students. The freshman class is more than
20 percent Hispanic....

Another challenge for Catholic colleges and universities is educating
students for social responsibility and citizenship. We can do that by having our
curriculum and cocurricular activities embody the Catholic social justice
tradition. There's a real willingness and interest of this generation of
students to be involved in service, to encounter and struggle with actual
problems in society.

The issue of Catholic identity is on the minds of most Catholic institutions.
For us that means living out the tradition of John Baptist de LaSalle by placing
the student at the center and focusing on their needs so we can discover their
gifts and help them succeed. We also follow in the tradition of Catholic liberal
education through our great books program, in which everyone reads Aquinas and
Augustine, Newman, the mystics. It's a way to incorporate the Catholic
intellectual tradition and it gets students to think broadly about the important
questions.

Creating an interreligious understanding and making Catholic education
accessible for people who aren't Catholic is very much a part of our mission. We
see a growing interest from faculty and staff in supporting that. And inviting
people from all religions to be part of this educational tradition helps
strengthen it.

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DOMINICAN SR. LINDA BEVILACQUA

Barry University

Miami Shores, Fla.

A Dominican institution, Barry University enrolls nearly 9,000 students in
more than 60 traditional undergraduate programs, accelerated bachelor's programs
designed for working adults, and more than 50 graduate programs. For eight years
in a row, U.S. News and World Report's Best Colleges Edition has ranked Barry as
No. 1 for campus diversity among similar-sized schools in the South. (See story
on Page 6.)

Bevilacqua, who previously served as president of Gwynedd-Mercy College in
Gwynedd Valley, Pa., has been president of Barry since 2004 and is on the board
of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.

We find ourselves in a culture whose values are extremely contrary to our
own. When you focus on a theological framework and the context of Catholic
higher education--a strong faith dimension and intellectual tradition, Catholic
social teaching, rituals, sacramental life--and juxtapose that against the
prevailing values of materialism, secularism, consumerism, individualism,
racism, ageism, it is challenging.

Today we have large numbers of students coming to Catholic colleges and
universities without a clear understanding of the basics of their faith and the
teachings of the church. Over the years Catholic colleges have adapted the
curriculum of their theology departments to reflect that change.

Religious congregations are well aware that if their mission and charism are
to perdure, it's because lay men and women embrace the mission and transmit them
into the future. Our university was founded by the Adrian Dominicans, and I'm
particularly grateful our congregation realized years ago we needed to prepare
for when there Would be fewer of us in positions of influence in our
institutions. Now, we take five to eight members of the Barry community to the
motherhouse in Michigan for a sponsorship weekend every other year with all
other sponsored institutions. It's a very meaningful, powerful experience to go
back to where it all started and pick up the energy, history and tradition as
lived in that place.

That same kind of ongoing education of faculty, staff and students is equally
important for trustees of Catholic colleges and universities. For trustees to
guide the institution well, we need them to understand the lived expression as a
Catholic, Dominican university.

A final challenge to Catholic higher education in this country is how to
foster and enable students, faculty and staff of other religious traditions to
deepen their faith. In my first year as president, the mother of a new student
told me she was bringing her third daughter to Barry. Their family was Muslim,
but she said she and her husband were so pleased at how the university had
embraced their two older daughters that they had no choice but to bring their
third. That notion of Catholic higher education as welcoming and hospitable and
respectful of people of other faith traditions is both a hallmark and a
challenge.